Sylvia Burwell, the secretary of health and human services, weighed in last week with a USA Today piece imaginatively headlined “Affordable Care Act Is Working.” Here’s the best bit:

As of midnight Sunday, about 11.4 million Americans selected Marketplace plans or were automatically re-enrolled, including 8.6 million through the HealthCare.gov platform, and—based on preliminary data provided to us by the State-Based Marketplaces—2.8 million through these state Marketplaces.

Enthusiasm and demand for Marketplace insurance were clear: In the final day, more new consumers signed up for health coverage than any other day this open enrollment or last.

That’s like saying people are enthusiastic about filing their income taxes because so many of them do it on April 15.

Exactly. Waiting until my last clean pair of underwear isn’t clean anymore is no way to demonstrate my love of laundry.

Who’s dumber? These guys for feeding us this crap; or us for swallowing it?

Whenever I mention that Hillary Clinton is an overwhelming favorite for the Democratic nomination — and would be even if Senator Elizabeth Warren ran — the conversation usually comes back to 2008. “She was supposed to be inevitable last time,” the refrain goes, “and she lost.”

I get it. I remember that Mrs. Clinton was “inevitable,” and I see why today’s discussions of Mrs. Clinton’s strength sound familiar.

But there is no equivalence between Mrs. Clinton’s strength then and now. She was never inevitable eight years ago. If a candidate has ever been inevitable — for the nomination — it is Mrs. Clinton today.

Maybe so. I say otherwise, and in fact have guaranteed Elizabeth Warren will run, and will clean the floor with Hillary. But I have been wrong before.

Polls show that the Republicans have an advantage in the fight for control of the Senate. They lead in enough states to win control, and they have additional opportunities in North Carolina and New Hampshire to make up for potential upsets. As Election Day nears, Democratic hopes increasingly hinge on the possibility that the polls will simply prove wrong.

But that possibility is not far-fetched. The polls have generally underestimated Democrats in recent years, and there are reasons to think it could happen again.

He doubled down a few days later:

The Republicans are looking forward to having a good week. They are favored to win the Senate, and they could pick up enough House seats to finish with their largest margin since 1928.

But perhaps more important to the party’s long-term prospects than Tuesday’s results is what unfolds in the presidential battleground states. If the night ends with tight races in Iowa, North Carolina, Colorado and Georgia, as the polls suggest, then the results will not be as great for Republicans as many analysts will surely proclaim.

How did this guy still have his job on the morning of November 5th?

Eight years later, though, it’s clear that it’s still possible for a candidate to approach inevitability, and it is Mrs. Clinton who, in a twist, deserves the distinction.

…

The fact that Mrs. Clinton seems poised to clear the field is the surest evidence that 2016 is not 2008. It means that Ms. Warren is getting a very different message from the one Mr. Obama received when Senator Harry Reid reportedly urged him to seek the presidency. Instead, many of the first people to endorse Mr. Obama in 2008, like Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, have already endorsed Mrs. Clinton.

Even if Ms. Warren did run, it is hard to argue that she is as strong as Mr. Obama was eight years ago. Not only is it a stretch to compare the enthusiasm for Ms. Warren to that for Mr. Obama, but the differences between her and Mrs. Clinton on inequality and finance are also less clear — and probably less salient — than Mrs. Clinton’s vote to authorize the war in Iraq. Ms. Warren won’t replicate Mr. Obama’s support among black voters, either, and it is hard to see how she would make up for it.

Again, I could be wrong. But if you’re going to be a bear, be a grizzly. Cohn is right that Lieawatha does not light the same fire as Barack Obama in 2008. But Hillary doesn’t light the same fire as Hillary of 2008 either. We’ve known her for almost a quarter century; if we’re not in love with her yet, when will we be?

Here’s a metaphor to describe my take: Hillary’s “inevitability” is like a warship, say a US destroyer, say the USS Cole. Indomitable. Invincible. Fauxcahantas is like a motorized dinghy, a skiff. With explosives packed in her bow. All Crockagawea has to do is set her sights on USS Hillary and torpedo her below the waterline. She’ll sink faster than you can say Waterloo.

A ceremony has been held in New York to honour black civil rights leader Malcolm X at the site where he was assassinated 50 years ago.

Activists, politicians and actors were among some 300 people who paid tributes to Malcolm X in Harlem.

They heard a call by one of his daughters to reassess her father’s importance to civil rights in America.

By the time he was gunned down, the Muslim leader had moderated his militant message of black separatism.

But he remained a passionate advocate of black unity, self-respect and self-reliance.

Oh, and in case you forgot:

Three members of the Nation of Islam organisation were convicted of his murder.

Doubtless Malcolm had many white haters, some of whom threatened to kill him. But he was murdered by members of his own community.

Take the other celebrated assassinations of the era, JFK, MLK, RFK. Only Martin Luther King was killed by one of the “usual suspects”. John Kennedy was killed by a Cuban- Soviet-sympathizing Marxist; Bobby by a Palestinian. And Malcolm X by a forbear of Louis Farrakhan. Whatever lessons we can draw from these tragedies are still lost on us today. That’s why Marie Harf can warn of “Christian evangelicals”, why Janet Napolitano can sound the alarm over returning soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan, and why the media can ignore the political predilections (hard left and hard atheist) of a murderer of three North Carolinian Muslims. As bad an idea as it is to ignore history, it’s an ever worse idea to deny it.

PS: I find Malcolm himself to be a fascinating character, and can’t recommend Spike Lee’s biopic highly enough. X’s “by any means necessary” rhetoric was the yin to MLK’s nonviolent yang. But his story is one for another time. I would just note that many accounts of his murder pin the motive on Eljah Muhammad’s anger at X’s rejection of the Nation of Islam and his growing moderation of tone.

Democrats may boycott the Israeli Prime Minister’s speech before Congress, but there’ll be another demographic bloc who will be all eyes and ears:

Arab governments have been privately expressing their concern to Washington about the emerging terms of a potential nuclear deal with Iran, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing Arab and U.S. officials involved in the deliberations.

According to the report, the direction of American diplomacy with Tehran has added fuel to fears in some Arab states of a nuclear-arms race in the region, as well as reviving talk about possibly extending a U.S. nuclear umbrella to Middle East allies to counter any Iranian threat.

The major Sunni states, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, have said that a final agreement could allow Shiite-dominated Iran, their regional rival, to keep the technologies needed to produce nuclear weapons, according to these officials, while removing many of the sanctions that have crippled its economy in recent years.

Arab officials said a deal would likely drive Saudi Arabia, for one, to try to quickly match Iran’s nuclear capabilities, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“At this stage, we prefer a collapse of the diplomatic process to a bad deal,” an Arab official who has discussed Iran with the Obama administration and Saudi Arabia in recent weeks told the newspaper.

…

Arab governments have steered clear of aligning their statements with Israel, but share many of that country’s fears, U.S. and Arab diplomats said.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who has been perhaps the most vocal critic of the deal with Iran, said last week that Israel knows the details of the planned nuclear deal with Iran and warned that it is a bad one.

“I think this is a bad agreement that is dangerous for the state of Israel, and not just for it,” said Netanyahu, adding, “If anyone thinks otherwise what is there to hide here?”

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki later questioned whether Netanyahu indeed knows “more than the negotiators” about the talks, saying “there is no deal yet.”

Many years ago, Mrs. BTL and I were in discussions with our school system about the proper education of the heirs to the Bloodthirstani throne. We were at loggerheads. The school psychologist asked, with pain and exasperation, “Why don’t you trust us?” The sirens and flashing lights that followed were not from a school fire drill, but from the BS alert system hardwired into our brains. The question was either irrelevant or it answered itself. Either we had a disagreement over the facts of the case—in which case trust did not apply—or the facts were not in dispute—in which case something else explained the disagreement.

But mostly it was the manipulative nature of the question that so pi**ed us off. It’s not about you, we answered.

It’s the same tone I hear from Jen Space Cadet. She implies that we should trust the regime. But it’s not about the regime, or not just. It’s about the Islamic Republic of Iran that has compared the “Zionist entity” to a “filthy microbe” and has sworn to wipe it off the map. Israel is not a disinterested party in these negotiations.

Psaki began her career in 2001 with the re-election campaigns of Iowa Democrats Tom Harkin and Tom Vilsack. Psaki then became deputy press secretary for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. From 2005 to 2006, Psaki served as communications director to U.S. Representative Joseph Crowley and regional press secretary for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.[7]

Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign of U.S. Senator Barack Obama, Psaki served as traveling press secretary.[7] After Obama won the election, Psaki followed Obama to the White House as Deputy Press Secretary and was promoted to Deputy Communications Director on December 19, 2009.[8][9] On September 22, 2011, Psaki left that position to become senior vice president and managing director at the Washington, D.C. office of public relations firm Global Strategy Group.[10][11]

In 2012, Psaki returned to political communications as press secretary for President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.[12] On February 11, 2013, Psaki became spokesperson for the United States Department of State.[12]

She’s a Democrat political flack—which is fine; she’s obviously successful. But when one’s very existence hangs in the balance, as Israel’s does, does she inspire trust? She—and trust—are irrelevant.

Harf began her career at the Directorate of Intelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency as an analyst focusing on Middle Eastern leadership issues. She later became the media spokesperson of the CIA.[3]

During the 2012 presidential election, Harf helped craft President Obama’s national security and communications strategy, and also served as campaign spokeswoman on national security issues.[2][3]

In June 2013, Harf was appointed Deputy Spokesperson for the US State Department, where she currently serves as deputy under Jen Psaki.[2][3]

Better: she at least earned a job in the field of her expertise. But she too exists largely as a mouthpiece for others. And I seriously doubt her former colleagues at the CIA who have studied ISIS and its ideology agree that all we need to do to defeat it is find them positions as stock clerks at Walmart. At least I pray not.

When he’s not trying to find gainful employment for decapitators and immolators, Obama spares a few words for soaking the rich.

This guy never mentions Obama by name, but if the president were in his classroom, he’d be sitting in the corner wearing a dunce cap:

A few points to highlight:

Nearly everyone assumes that a person who is among the top ten percent of all income earners qualifies as rich.

But according to 2011 data, a top ten percent household makes around $150,000 or above in gross annual income — that’s income before deductions and taxes. Now, $150,000 is a nice living, but it certainly doesn’t make you rich.

OK, then. What about the top 5%?

You get into this percentile if your household makes around $190,000 or above. That’s a nice bump. But it hardly puts you in the rich category.

I don’t have to tell a lot of our urban readers that 150-190k hardly qualifies as rich in Boston, New York, San Francisco, etc. Professor Ohanian is right that the people we can all agree are rich are few and far between.

But thank God for them:

Now, let’s talk about fair.

Fair would seem be that the group of taxpayers who earn 10% of the country’s income would pay 10% of the country’s taxes; the group who earned 20% would pay 20% of the taxes and so on.

But what If I told you that, according to IRS data, the top 10% of all earners — the people making $150,000 and above — pay 71% of all federal income tax while earning only 43% of all income.

If anything, the top ten percent pay more than their fair share.

So, as it happens, do the much reviled top 1%. They earn 17 percent of all income, but pay 37% of all federal income taxes.

That’s an apples-to-apples comparison—income to income tax. You rarely hear those numbers in this discussion. Doubtless because they undermine Obama’s argument.

As does this:

Ah, but what about payroll taxes — the money we pay to fund Social Security and Medicare? That takes a bigger bite of the paycheck of lower earners than higher earners. Isn’t that unfair?

…

[T]he benefits we receive from Social Security are capped, no matter how much we have paid in. This means that the payroll taxes of high earners actually help subsidize the social security and Medicare benefits that low earners receive at retirement.

But there’s one group Professor Ohanian does finger for freeloading:

And what about those at the other end of the income scale, the lower earners? Are we squeezing them? Hardly. Those who make $45,000 or less, 47% of all earners, pay little and often no income taxes.

Everybody’s all over that State Department ditz, Marie Harf, for suggesting that all ISIS terrorists need to give up their wicked, wicked ways is a regular swing shift at the old Packard plant.

“We can not win this war by killing them. We can not kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium and longer term to go after the root causes that lead people to join these groups, whether it is lack of opportunity for jobs–“

Operation Paperclip was the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) program in which over 1,500 German scientists, technicians, and engineers from Nazi Germany and other foreign countries were brought to the United States for employment in the aftermath of World War II.[1] It was conducted by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), and in the context of the burgeoning Cold War. One purpose of Operation Paperclip was to deny German scientific expertise and knowledge to the Soviet Union[2] and the United Kingdom,[3] as well as inhibiting post-war Germany from redeveloping its military research capabilities.

Although the JIOA’s recruitment of German scientists began after the Allied victory in Europe on May 8, 1945, U.S. President Harry Truman did not formally order the execution of Operation Paperclip until August 1945. Truman’s order expressly excluded anyone found “to have been a member of the Nazi Party, and more than a nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazi militarism”. However, those restrictions would have rendered ineligible most of the leading scientists the JIOA had identified for recruitment, among them rocket scientists Wernher von Braun, Kurt H. Debus and Arthur Rudolph, and the physician Hubertus Strughold, each earlier classified as a “menace to the security of the Allied Forces”.[4]

They don’t look too scary. Maybe it’s one thing to de-Nazify the odd rocket scientist or medical researcher, but another to de-Islamify an ISIS savage.

Kayla Mueller, ISIS’s latest victim, was an idealistic fool. She shouldn’t have died for that sin—if so, the streets of Cambridge would look like a Nigerian village after Boko Haram had passed through—and I am sorrier than I know why at the news of her murder.

Mueller […] worked with HAMAS and helped Palestinians harass Israeli soldiers and block them from doing their job of keeping Islamic terrorists out of Israel. She also worked to prevent Israel from tearing down terrorists’ “houses,” which the Palestinian terrorists used to smuggle weapons from and to HAMAS in order to perpetrate terrorist attacks. And she wrote several lying, anti-Israel blog posts.

…

Every single one of these hostages has been a leftist America-hater. They are anti-American “journalists” there to tell us how “moderate” and “democratic” these beheaders and live-human-burners are. Or they are anti-American “aid workers” (that’s like the Middle East version of Barack Obama’s “community organizer”).

This latter category describes Kayla Mueller, who went to Israel and the so-called “West Bank” and Gaza to help HAMASnik Jew-haters. From the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a terrorist group that aided and abetted Al-Qaeda, HAMAS, Islamic Jihad, and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade terrorists (including two British Muslims who blew up “Mike’s Bar” in Tel Aviv):

Abdullah Abu Rahma, coordinator of the popular committee in the village of Bil’in where Kayla joined the protests, told ISM: “Kayla came to Palestine to stand in solidarity with us. She marched with us and faced the military that occupies our land side by side with us. For this, Kayla will always live in our hearts. We send all our support to her family and will continue, like Kayla, to work against injustice wherever it is.” . . .

With the ISM, Kayla worked with Palestinians . . . resisting the confiscation and demolitions of their homes and lands. In the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Occupied East Jerusalem, she stayed with the Al Kurd family to try and prevent the takeover of their home by Israeli settlers.

I left out Debbie Schlussel’s more passionate prose. But I won’t bury the story. If the Muellers didn’t learn from Rachel Corrie’s example, perhaps some family somewhere will come to realize that young American girls don’t fare well alone in the Middle East. And that they should learn to fear Islamist extremists more than they hate Jews.

When future generations look back on the global-warming scare of the past 30 years, nothing will shock them more than the extent to which the official temperature records – on which the entire panic ultimately rested – were systematically “adjusted” to show the Earth as having warmed much more than the actual data justified.
Two weeks ago, under the headline “How we are being tricked by flawed data on global warming”, I wrote about Paul Homewood, who, on his Notalotofpeopleknowthat blog, had checked the published temperature graphs for three weather stations in Paraguay against the temperatures that had originally been recorded. In each instance, the actual trend of 60 years of data had been dramatically reversed, so that a cooling trend was changed to one that showed a marked warming.
This was only the latest of many examples of a practice long recognised by expert observers around the world – one that raises an ever larger question mark over the entire official surface-temperature record.

Following my last article, Homewood checked a swathe of other South American weather stations around the original three. In each case he found the same suspicious one-way “adjustments”. First these were made by the US government’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN). They were then amplified by two of the main official surface records, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) and the National Climate Data Center (NCDC), which use the warming trends to estimate temperatures across the vast regions of the Earth where no measurements are taken. Yet these are the very records on which scientists and politicians rely for their belief in “global warming”.

More at the link. But cogitate on this: If the Left will lie about which group – militant Islam – is responsible for the various terror attacks in our time, why would they tell the truth about anything?

In her post below, Aggie remarks how proud she is that we—she, I, you—have not knuckled under to political correctness and conventional wisdom, how we’ve remained consistent voices of honesty and ridiculers of sanctimony from the beginning. “We have never backed down and we haven’t modified the message in order to appeal to our Leftist friends in the Northeast.”

Ain’t it the truth. I’ve written about this on occasion—perhaps most directly in the Why Bloodthirsty, Why Liberal post at the upper-right of this page. This blog grew out of a series of email rants among friends (some former friends) after 9/11. That day was the day I chopped my own ice floe and paddled off to join Aggie in the frigid Arctic Seas of former-Leftism. One of the last communications from our friends on the shores of Moonbattery was in response to a screed of mine about the worse-than-uselessness of the UN (some subjects never grow old). Maybe so, our friend answered, but it’s good to have it nevertheless.

There you have it. Thirteen years old, and it still answers all. They didn’t dispute what we say—not about Israel, not about Islam, not about the follies of Big Government, not about any of it. The facts were not in dispute. Aggie and I could no longer deny the facts (though it took a clout to the head like 9/11 to bring me to my senses, for which I am anything but proud). These people, our friends and family, could. Still can.

Ideology is a powerful drug. It drives people to misrepresent the truth, first, then deny it when they can no longer misrepresent it. After that, they still say the lie is important because think where we’d be without it. You know those before-and-after pictures of meth addicts on the web? The ones that show corn-fed cheerleaders reduced to hollow-eyed skanks, strapping lads to gap-toothed punks? Ideology is more dangerous. Meth-heads, angel dusters, crack hos, et al are a danger only to themselves and those unfortunate to cross their paths. Unreconstructed liberals form into groups, parties even. And they vote. Looking at the results of their addiction, I wonder how the country, the world, will survive.

Nothing will match the piping hot schadenfreude we enjoy at the affected outrage (“I say!”) of the Harvard professors, the crimson crackpots, faced with the reality of the ObamaCare they supported—still support—now that it’s taking a bite out of their spotty white behinds. (Can you tell how much we enjoy it?)

Many in New York’s professional and cultural elite have long supported President Obama’s health care plan. But now, to their surprise, thousands of writers, opera singers, music teachers, photographers, doctors, lawyers and others are learning that their health insurance plans are being canceled and they may have to pay more to get comparable coverage, if they can find it.

They are part of an unusual, informal health insurance system that has developed in New York, in which independent practitioners were able to get lower insurance rates through group plans, typically set up by their professional associations or chambers of commerce. That allowed them to avoid the sky-high rates in New York’s individual insurance market, historically among the most expensive in the country.

But under the Affordable Care Act, they will be treated as individuals, responsible for their own insurance policies. For many of them, that is likely to mean they will no longer have access to a wide network of doctors and a range of plans tailored to their needs. And many of them are finding that if they want to keep their premiums from rising, they will have to accept higher deductible and co-pay costs or inferior coverage.

We see it as an entrepreneurial bill, a bill that says to someone, if you want to be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspirations because you will have health care.

That was Nancy Pelosi almost five years ago. The Speaker of the House promised—she promised!—that you could sing Traviata and still have that bunion on your big toe looked at. But now, the “cultural elite” find “to their surprise” that she’s as much a liar as the Messiah is.

I’ve already written about karma this morning (see below), and I’m becoming a big fan.

It is an uncomfortable position for many members of the creative classes to be in.

“We are the Obama people,” said Camille Sweeney, a New York writer and member of the Authors Guild. Her insurance is being canceled, and she is dismayed that neither her pediatrician nor her general practitioner appears to be on the exchange plans. What to do has become a hot topic on Facebook and at dinner parties frequented by her fellow writers and artists.

“I’m for it,” she said. “But what is the reality of it?”

The Buddha couldn’t have said it better himself.

PS: Oh, to have been a fly on the wall of those “dinner parties”! However did they digest their quinoa?

The former Alaska governor was responding to a massive freak-out by PETA — and others — which was upset at pictures Palin posted on New Year’s Day of her youngest son, Trig, standing on top of Jill, the family’s black Labrador Retriever.

“May 2015 see every stumbling block turned into a stepping stone on the path forward,” Palin wrote on that post, which showed Jill appearing to be unfazed by Trig’s presence.

…

“Hey, by the way, remember your “Woman of the Year”, Ellen DeGeneres? Did you get all wee-wee’d up when she posted this sweet picture?” Palin wrote, linking to a picture DeGeneres posted on Facebook in July of her daughter standing on top of the family dog.

I’m not the first to complain about the protestors—that would be anyone stuck in traffic, turned away from Christmas celebrations, or otherwise inconvenienced by die-ins and sundry foolish demonstrations.

But I wonder if we all just haven’t had our fill with the hands-up-don’t-shoot-i-can’t-breathe crowd.

In what was slated as a peaceful “March to the Arch” by Ferguson demonstrators, more than two dozen people were arrested and pepper spray was used by police. The melee unfolded as protesters tried to storm the St. Louis Metropolitan Police headquarters building.

About seventy-five people marched through the downtown area and eventually went to police headquarters. There, with the building on lockdown, the group took the opportunity to rush an open door. Several people pushed in.

…

There was quite a bit of pushing and shoving as police tried to clear the demonstrators out, with officers eventually resorting to the use of pepper spray to push the crowd back.

Five people were arrested in the initial scuffle. Police chief Sam Dotson says officers were justified in clearing the group out of the lobby.

“We’re a public building, we’re open. But we’re open for legitimate business. We’re not open for people to come in and push their own agendas and disrupt the business that has to go on here.”

Protesters were critical of police use of pepper spray, many saying things escalated too quickly, with one “live streamer” who had been hit saying it was happening too often.

Police say all those calls are already in the met, or on the way to being met, and that protesters are now distracting them from other work with repetitious demands.

“The forty or fifty officers that it took to handle the disturbance that was going on outside police headquarters weren’t in our neighborhoods doing the job our citizens have asked them to do,” Chief Dotson said. “That’s a big deal”

As we’ve long noted, Michael Brown very likely never said “hands up don’t shoot”, or if he did, it was some other time when he wasn’t punching a police officer in the head while reaching for his weapon or bull-rushing him while taking bullet after bullet. And while Eric Garner did say “I can’t breathe”, that meant he could, in fact, breathe. He died not of strangulation, but of the resultant stress on his cardiovascular system (already taxed by diabetes, obesity, and asthma) of resisting arrest.

But we tried to be tolerant. We were told the anger was justifiable, even if the causes were not. Police are pigs, you see, even when there’s insufficient evidence to charge them of a crime. Everyone knew a genuine story of police brutality, they swore, even if these stories were bogus.

Stop. I can’t make you, but stop. No more tolerance, no more allowances. To permit any further disruptions would be to treat you like children. Which you are not. “Black lives matter”, you shout. Indeed they do. If you make them matter. Make them matter. “This is what democracy looks like”, you shouted in the video at the police station. No, it’s not. It’s what mobocracy looks like. Anarchy. And it’s over.

PS: Same goes for the police and any “strike” they may be staging. A moratorium on traffic tickets would be welcome. But if you don’t do your job, you should be canned and replaced by someone who will.